Is Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone an anti-semite? This question has swamped the blogosphere in the past few days after the director gave a controversial interview to the Sunday Times of London. The director of such celebrated films as PLATOON, WALL STREET, JFK and NIXON, whose most recent documentary SOUTH OF THE BORDER is a controversial look at the left-leaning politics in current favor in South America, has not exactly been known for his discretion. He is a social and political critic who certainly has taken the establishment to task.

However, his reputation for being outspoken is creating some unwanted publicity for the celebrated director. When asked in an interview with the Sunday Times of London why there was "such a focus on the Holocaust," Stone replied: "The Jewish domination of the media." He added: "They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

His comments have gotten him lambasted in the press. The American Jewish Committee issued a statement yesterday comparing Stone to Mel Gibson. whose drunken outrage a few years ago revealed an anti-semitic streak. “By invoking this grotesque, toxic stereotype, Oliver Stone has outed himself as an anti-Semite,” said AJC Exe cutive Director David Harris in a prepared statement. “For all of Stone’s progressive pretensions, his remark is no different from one of the drunken, Jew-hating rants of his fellow Hollywood celebrity, Mel Gibson.”

A denouncement of the director also came from the Anti-Defamation League. Abraham Foxman, ADL national director, said: "Oliver Stone has once again shown his conspiratorial colors with his comments about "Jewish domination of the media" and control over U.S. foreign policy. His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence."

This isn't the first time Stone has made controversial comments about the Holocaust. In January, he characterized Hitler as an "easy scapegoat" in a presentation to tv critics in support of his upcoming Showtime miniseries "Oliver Stone's Secret History of America." Stone issued an apology Monday afternoon. "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret," Stone said in a statement. "Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry," Stone's statement continued. "The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity." For some, his apology is too little, too late.

Sandy Mandelberger, Film New York Editor